Page:The Pilgrim's Progress, the Holy War, Grace Abounding Chunk3.djvu/80

80 be openly, even in the View of the world, even so as "to put Christ to an open shame." Thirdly, I found that those he there intended were for ever shut up of God, both in blindness, hardness, and impenitency: it is impossible they should be renewed again unto repentance. By all these particulars I found, to God's everlasting praise, my sin was not the sin in this place intended.

First, I confessed I was falling, but not falling a away—that is, from the profession of faith in Jesus unto eternal life.

Secondly, I confessed that I had put Jesus Christ to shame by my sin, but not to open shame; I did not deny him before men, nor condemn him as a fruitless one before the world.

Thirdly, Nor did I find that God had shut me up or denied me to come, though I found it hard work indeed to some to him by sorrow and repentance. Blessed be God for unreasonable grace.

224. Then I considered that in the tenth chapter of the Hebrews, and found that the wilful sin there mentioned is not every wilful sin, but that which doth throw off Christ, and then his commandments too. Secondly, That must be done also openly, before two or three witnesses, to answer that of the law (ver. 28). Thirdly, This sin cannot be committed but with great despite done to the Spirit of grace, despising both the dissuasions from that sin and the persuasions to the contrary. But the Lord knows though this my sin was devilish, yet it did not amount to these.

225. And as touching that in the twelfth chapter of the Hebrew about Esau's selling of his birthright, though this was that which killed me, and stood like spear, against me yet now I did consider first, that his was not an hasty thought against the continual labour of his mind, but a thought consented to, and put in practices likewise, and that after some deliberation (Gen. xxv.) Secondly, It was a public and open action, even from his brother,if not before many more; this made his sin of a far more heinous nature